90% of streams go to top 1% of artists, data shows

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90% of streams go to the top 1% of artists, according to research conducted by analytics company Alpha Data. 

As reported by Rolling Stone, 1.6million artists released music to streaming services in the past year, but nine in ten tracks played were made by just 16,000 top tier artists. Almost half of all artists on streaming platforms received less than 100 plays. 

The numbers are supported by Spotify’s own research into the distribution of streams, which in turn has a direct impact on how much artists stand to earn from plays of their music. Napster offers the most generous payments, at $0.019 per play, while YouTube pays the least, at only $0.00069 per view. It has never been more important for producers and DJs to monetise digital platforms given dance music’s gig-less economic reality, so read our guide to getting paid through streaming services. 

Bandcamp has become an even more vital platform for supporting the music you love, with 80% of all sales from the online music store going directly to artists and labels. In March, the platform announced it would be waiving its revenue share for all sales for one day, and on Friday 20th, took no cut from purchases made. In total, $4.3 million was spent on music over the course of 24 hours, all going straight to the creators. In July, it was announced that Bandcamp would continue its fee-free Fridays on the first one of each month until the end of 2020